Paper Cranes
by Wintertime
Summary: [GSR] Sara finds a thousand paper cranes as Grissom makes a single wish. Geeky origami fluff.


Disclaimer: Unfortunately, I don't own CSI.  I'd like to, but CBS does instead, so I have to write things like this and point out what CBS _could _be doing, if they were a little more romantic.

Note: Pure fluff.  _Origami _fluff, no less.

Edit: Thanks to Ghibli for pointing out a typo!

- -

Sara started finding the paper cranes everywhere.

Some of them were the size of her hand, and made of thicker, glossier paper.  Some were just barely the length of her fingertip, and crafted from pale tissue.  One, delivered to her apartment, was almost the size of a tricycle.  It was painted in Christmas-colors, scarlet and emerald, and so absurdly beautiful that she set it in the corner of her bedroom like a potted plant and watched it before she slept, as if it take flight in the hours between midnight and dawn.  All of the cranes were differently-colored, and mostly of different sizes.

The only common factors were their beauty, and their anonymity.

None of them came with a note, and she never saw anyone leave them.  They were simply left for her to find - - resting on chairs, tucked in her inbox, delivered to her door.  Sometimes they came in baskets, sometimes baskets, and sometimes alone.

But they never came with a note, never with an explanation.

She checked out a book on origami, and spent the late night hours reading it in her bedroom chair, occasionally looking up at the assembled collection of cranes.  She read about how to make paper boxes and paper masks in addition to paper cranes.  She read about folding techniques and Japanese rice paper.  She studied pictures of hand-crafted paper boats, paper lanterns, and even paper bananas.

And her collection of paper cranes grew.

Sara began to feel unexpectedly energetic.  She photographed crime scenes with renewed interest, chatted with her coworkers with a smile on her face and a willingness to laugh lurking just underneath the surface, and didn't say anything when she found another crane (this one crafted from golden foil) on top of the coffee pot when she went for another cup.  She hid it away in her locker with a few other she had found that day, and smiled.

"You've got a secret," Catherine said, evaluating her one day.

Sara blushed and looked down at her shoes.  "No, I don't."

She thought about her apartment, cluttered not with dust or knickknacks but with hundreds of carefully-folded paper cranes, and grinned.

"Well," Catherine said, "it must be a _good _secret, anyway."

"Yeah," Sara said.  "I think it is."

That night, she curled up on her sofa and read the story of Sadako and the thousand paper cranes.  She didn't cry, but wiped her dry eyes anyway, as if she might not have felt the tears on her cheeks.

She counted her cranes.

Four months had gone by since she had discovered the first, and she now had eight-hundred-twelve stashed away, including the large one in her bedroom.  All still anonymous.  All still beautiful.  All still hers.

_Someone's wishing for me._

She still didn't mention it to anyone, not even Catherine, who still regarded her with an indulgent smile and said that she must have found a man.  Sara shrugged innocently and let Catherine think what Catherine wanted to think.

She started counting each crane, and remained silent as the count soared into the nine hundreds.  A strange, restless anxiety began to fill her, and her edges were ragged again.  What if the count didn't stop at a thousand?  What if no one was wishing for her, after all?  What if it was just a joke?

_Don't be stupid_, she told herself firmly.  _They're beautiful, and they're mine, and if they are a joke, they're nothing to laugh at.  It means something, even if they go into the hundred thousands instead of stopping._

She conducted innocent surveys.

"Greg," she said one day, "do you know anything about origami?"

"Nothing much," he admitted.  "I can make those little boxes if I have the right instructions in front of me, but nah, nothing spectacular.  My _brother _was great at that kind of thing.  I remember one time, he made his girlfriend a bouquet of paper roses."

"She must have been happy."

"No," Greg said.  "She was allergic to flowers."

"Paper ones?"

"She was a little bit of a hypochondriac."

She asked Nick one day, when the two of them were driving to a robbery scene.  He was singing along to the radio, and looked at her expectantly when she turned it down.

"I'm reading a book about origami," she said.

Nick smiled.  "I'm reading a book about a murder.  Want to trade?"

"You read murder mysteries?"

"Occasionally, Hercule Poirot's lack of scientific procedure is comforting," Nick said.  "Been reading Agatha Christie books since I was a kid.  So what about origami?  Are you good at it?"

She'd actually never tried anything.  "No."

"That's surprising," he said.  "I'm sure you'll get better."

He said nothing about a thousand paper cranes, and she found herself feeling relieved.  Nick was her best friend, and finding out that he was her origami artist would have been a little startling.  They bought ice cream on the way back from the scene and she made him tell her all about the murder mystery and they bet on whether or not she picked the right suspect.

"Though you probably didn't," Nick said.  "They're tricky."

"Yeah," Sara said, "but I'm really good at guessing who."

With one exception, of course.  A paper crane exception.

She talked to Warrick next, because, after Warrick, there was only one other option, and it was an avenue she was terrified of pursuing.  She was too hopeful about that other option.

She was more subtle.  She waited until they were alone, and then carefully began to construct an origami rose out of a coffee filter.

"Interesting hobby," Warrick said.

She presented it to him.  "Do you like it?"

He examined the rose.  "It needs some more color.  Personally, I like red."  He watched her make another one, and then tried it himself.

"Greg's going to get mad if we use up all his coffee filters," she said, watching him painstakingly try to reconstruct a flower.

"We'll say Grissom's using them to catch bugs," Warrick said absently, and unfolded his rose, grinning at it.  "Awesome.  I can make some of these for my girl."

"I hadn't heard you had a girl," Sara said, again feeling that tremulous, anxious relief.

"It's best to keep stuff like that secret in the lab."  Warrick bent over another coffee filter and started to work again.  "Our poor little lab rats will gossip about anything, and I don't want my romantic life to be more fuel for the fire."  He finished his rose.  "Can you keep it a secret?"

"Absolutely," Sara assured him.

He tucked the flower into her hair.  "Good."

Nine-hundred-ninety-eight was done from blue-and-silver wrapping paper, and she found it setting on her front porch with the morning paper.  She brought it in and set it atop her lampshade, where it perched happily, looking down at her with an artificial, paper smile.

"I know what you're thinking," Sara said to it.  "One down, two to go."

_And I also know what _I'm _thinking - - stop talking to a paper crane before I go crazy._

Nine-hundred-ninety-nine.  Starched red silk, in her empty coffee cup.  She stared at it for almost two minutes before upending the cup and putting the crane in her locker.  She looked at it - - _two down, one to go_ - - and her own reflection in the mirror.  She looked too hopeful, too dreamy, too _enchanted _to be the woman she usually thought she was - - and sure, the suspension between hope and doubt was killing her, but it was a _lovely_ suspension.  She was on a Ferris wheel, hanging in the air right before it rushed down to the bottom again.

_Only I don't want to rush down, _she thought.  _I want to stay on the ride._

With a sigh, she closed her locker.

Grissom stood there, holding out the final paper crane.

For an instant, Sara almost didn't recognize him.  Silly as it was, she almost thought that she was still looking in the mirror, because that same enchanted look was in his eyes - - that same reckless hope.  But the eyes were blue, not brown, and the face was _his_.  He was smiling anxiously at her as he extended the crane.

It was the prettiest one yet - - big enough to rest in the palm of her hand, and made from simple, cream-colored paper.  But the paper was sparkling with golden glitter, and when Sara took it, she felt the heaviness of the transfer as it weighed down her hand.

"A thousand paper cranes," Grissom said, "equals one wish."

She stood there, holding the crane, and said, "I counted them.  I hoped it would be you."

"It's me," Grissom said.  "And I hope you'll accept the apology.  Actions speak louder than words, and I was hoping that a thousand paper cranes would be more eloquent than speech."  He smiled at her, and took her hand.  "I wished for you, Sara, but I don't know whether or not that's a wish that you can grant."

She laughed.  It sounded almost teary, but she knew she was smiling.

"Grissom," she said, "you didn't have to fold a thousand paper cranes to have me.  You just needed to say something."

Grissom's eyes widened.  "I suppose I could have saved a lot of paper that way," he said musingly.  "But the extravagance of the gesture means something, right?  You did like them, didn't you?"  He was honestly grinning, and she supposed he had no idea how charming that grin was to her.

"They're beautiful," she said, looking at the one in her hand.  "This one most of all."

Grissom took a step closer and kissed her cheek gently, almost timidly, as if he were afraid that she might stop him, but, of course, she didn't.  She leaned her head against his shoulder, hand still cradling the last crane.

"No," Grissom said, tracing her cheek with his fingers.  "_This _one most of all."

He helped her bring the last paper crane to its nest, and they tied them with string and hung them from her ceiling so they would fly.

"Cranes," Grissom said critically, "_should _fly, after all."

"And us?"

He smiled at her.  "We're already flying."

- finis -


End file.
